I'm going to have a "word wall" for calculus, and I've never had one before, so it's going up a wee bit at a time. Apparently, they're all the rage in English (ahem, language arts) classes. Well, it's going pretty slowly, and I had my student aide be artsy with the words. She got one word done: "derivative", and I thought I'd put it up instead of waiting for all the other words to be done. The next day in calculus class, I proudly pointed to what was going to be the word wall, and the students said, upon looking at the one word up there, "oh! is that the "word" on your word wall?".
I have yet to think of an effective response to students who claim: I knew all the stuff in class and when I did homework, I just choked on the test. .... or .... I understand perfectly well in class, but then when I get home, I don't know how to do things. ... or ... I just don't "test" well.
I want to say, that well, then you really DON'T understand and you're just fooling yourself. I have to think of a constructive way of saying that. I also question effective study habits. Or effective note/text reading and processing.
The Mom Rule of Thumb: You will know that *you* understand it when you can describe it (word, process, reasoning) to your mother and she will at least see what you mean if not understand it herself.
ReplyDeleteHow Cool. I've never heard that. That's a nice constructive way of saying what I want to say.
ReplyDeleteMs. Cookie